We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Wednesday, September 3. 2014

Nature's alterations to the landscape never end, and mankind gets in the way.

Billingsgate Island, once the site of a lighthouse, a school, and over 30 houses, is now Billingsgate Shoal. It used to be a popular picnic destination, big clambakes.

Some of it is above water now, during low tides. Best explanation I've heard is that destroying the salt marshes that protected it from Cape Cod Bay (for salt hay to feed the critters) is what destroyed it.

This photo shows what agriculture and deforestation (by the Indians and then by the Europeans with their farms and cattle) did to the soil of the outer Cape: it's down to sand and sweet-smelling scrub now:

IN addition to the land use changes, another interpretation I was given is as follows: Billingsgate was maintained as an island by a balance between sand transport and erosion. It was mainly exposed to erosion (wave energy) from the west and sand transport (longshore drift ) from the north. As Provincetown propagated west by sediment transport it shielded wave energy carrying sand south along the Cape Cod Bay coast of Truro. Billingsgate stopped receiving the sediments from southward longshore drift, but still was exposed to wave energy from the west, and ultimately erosion overcame deposition. A number of houses still in Wellfleet were moved form Billingsgate Island.

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